Well, there .. I said it !!! I bought AMD, and there's nothing you can say to make me feel bad about it.
:P
OK, you ask ... why on Earth would you invest in that AMD when an Intel C2D would smoke it in any number of benchmarks ?? Well, you see .. there are methods to WT's madness, and altho they do not appear clear at first, some digging and cold hard facts will show that an AMD purchase was in fact a wise one.
It all started when I bought an Asrock SATAII 939 board back in '06, and I've been running an Opteron 144 in it (1.8 OC'd to 2.7) with at first an AGP and then a PCIe video card.
Now if you recall, this was the only board of its kind, capable of supporting both the aged AGP and new PCIe video cards. To be honest, the PCIe was not a full 16x or even an 8x bus implementation, but rather a 4x that somewhat hampered its raw benchmarks.
Rather than dwell on that 'missing' 6% performance loss, I looked at it as an awesome board to keep running through several hardware upgrades. Not only did the board offer 2 video slot options, but it also had a 'Future CPU slot' that intrigued me when I read about it.
Fast forward to early November of this year when I decided to take the plunge and buy the CPU adapter card (a riser card that supports the newest AM2 CPUs from AMD) and pair that up with an AMD 5000+ Black Edition CPU, named so as its multiplier was unlocked and you could then bump up the multiplier instead of the FSB !
Since its based on the 65nm Brisbane core, it runs cooler than its faster (clock speed) 6400+ Black Edition brother based on the 90nm Windsor core.
So if you're with me so far, we have a $50 budget board that doesn't like a high FSB, and its paired with a CPU that doesn't need to have its FSB raised to overclock much further than any other AMD CPUs. So what did I end up with in 5 minutes of preliminary overclocking ??
This is a 2.6ghz CPU so I simply bumped the multiplier up to 11.5 and ended up at 3.0ghz. Temps are holding at 31c, so I would like to squeeze 3.4 out of it if I can by the end of the week. I want to let it burn in at 3.0 for a bit tho.
Compared to an Intel C2D, thats a horrible OC, but keep in mind I have just started to see what this chip will do, and this entire build was done by re-using an aged socket 939 board that nobody wants anymore. I didn't have to buy a new board, altho I did invest good $$ in what I bought, but its something you don't see very often also.
Anyhoo, I'd be flogged for not posting pics, so here ya go:
First, the hardware - an AM2CPU card, a CoolerMaster HyperTX HSF, an AMD 5000+ BE, and 4gb of Super Talent DDR2-800 RAM. Total expenditure: $200
Side view after getting it booted up:
Big honkin' fan - I had to cut the plastic shroud that hangs off the back of the heatsink due to the riser card mounting sidways on the board:
And one last hardware shot of the 7950gx2 card that sits up nice and tight against the CPU upgrade riser card - its a rather tight fit there:
PS - Yes, this is my 'bling' case, with as much green as I could add in there ... and I'm not done yet. I didn't plan this out until just recently, but once you start tweaking, you just can never quit.
I use this rig primarily as a bench rig, giving me internet access when working on customer PCs, so its quite overkill for that purpose, but for something to do, it was a fun project.
:P
OK, you ask ... why on Earth would you invest in that AMD when an Intel C2D would smoke it in any number of benchmarks ?? Well, you see .. there are methods to WT's madness, and altho they do not appear clear at first, some digging and cold hard facts will show that an AMD purchase was in fact a wise one.
It all started when I bought an Asrock SATAII 939 board back in '06, and I've been running an Opteron 144 in it (1.8 OC'd to 2.7) with at first an AGP and then a PCIe video card.
Now if you recall, this was the only board of its kind, capable of supporting both the aged AGP and new PCIe video cards. To be honest, the PCIe was not a full 16x or even an 8x bus implementation, but rather a 4x that somewhat hampered its raw benchmarks.
Rather than dwell on that 'missing' 6% performance loss, I looked at it as an awesome board to keep running through several hardware upgrades. Not only did the board offer 2 video slot options, but it also had a 'Future CPU slot' that intrigued me when I read about it.
Fast forward to early November of this year when I decided to take the plunge and buy the CPU adapter card (a riser card that supports the newest AM2 CPUs from AMD) and pair that up with an AMD 5000+ Black Edition CPU, named so as its multiplier was unlocked and you could then bump up the multiplier instead of the FSB !
Since its based on the 65nm Brisbane core, it runs cooler than its faster (clock speed) 6400+ Black Edition brother based on the 90nm Windsor core.
So if you're with me so far, we have a $50 budget board that doesn't like a high FSB, and its paired with a CPU that doesn't need to have its FSB raised to overclock much further than any other AMD CPUs. So what did I end up with in 5 minutes of preliminary overclocking ??
This is a 2.6ghz CPU so I simply bumped the multiplier up to 11.5 and ended up at 3.0ghz. Temps are holding at 31c, so I would like to squeeze 3.4 out of it if I can by the end of the week. I want to let it burn in at 3.0 for a bit tho.
Compared to an Intel C2D, thats a horrible OC, but keep in mind I have just started to see what this chip will do, and this entire build was done by re-using an aged socket 939 board that nobody wants anymore. I didn't have to buy a new board, altho I did invest good $$ in what I bought, but its something you don't see very often also.
Anyhoo, I'd be flogged for not posting pics, so here ya go:
First, the hardware - an AM2CPU card, a CoolerMaster HyperTX HSF, an AMD 5000+ BE, and 4gb of Super Talent DDR2-800 RAM. Total expenditure: $200
Side view after getting it booted up:
Big honkin' fan - I had to cut the plastic shroud that hangs off the back of the heatsink due to the riser card mounting sidways on the board:
And one last hardware shot of the 7950gx2 card that sits up nice and tight against the CPU upgrade riser card - its a rather tight fit there:
PS - Yes, this is my 'bling' case, with as much green as I could add in there ... and I'm not done yet. I didn't plan this out until just recently, but once you start tweaking, you just can never quit.
I use this rig primarily as a bench rig, giving me internet access when working on customer PCs, so its quite overkill for that purpose, but for something to do, it was a fun project.
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